I'm excited to announce a new writer has joined the MileValue team: Bill Wilkes.

Bill was born and raised in Atlanta, Georgia. The son of an American Airlines pilot, he grew up with airplanes being his home away from home. He currently works for the baseball team in Baltimore, MD assisting with Major League rules interpretation and administration. Some of his favorite destinations to travel (with miles, of course) are Spain, Argentina, and Hawaii.

American Airlines Escalating Bonus on Miles Purchases

According to this post on MilePoint, through November 15th American Airlines is offering up to 12,000 bonus miles when you purchase AAdvantage miles. The maximum number of miles you can purchase in a calendar year (and also through this promotion) is 40,000.

To purchase, follow this link and input your AAdvantage information.

As you can see from the terms and conditions page below, the highest bonus is earned when you purchase between 36,000-40,000 miles.

Pre-posting update: Wyndham is trying to renege on the deal. A rep posted on FlyerTalk:
Sorry for the confusion everyone. To clarify there were 2 parts to this promotion.
First part were for members who were targeted through email and the dates for that part were August 6, 2012 to October 6, 2012 and completed by October 9, 2012.
Second part is for member's who were targeted through direct mail. Dates for this part are 9/12/12 to 12/31/12 and completed by 1/3/13.
To qualify you need to have been sent the direct mailer and book through the link provided.

Starwood Hotels Offering 20% Discount on Starpoints Purchases

Per this thread on FlyerTalk, Starwood is offering a 20% discount on all Starpoint purchases through November 30th. Purchasing Starpoints normally costs 3.5 cents per point. With this promotion, you can buy Starpoints for 2.8 cents each.

To purchase, simply follow this link and input your Starwood Preferred Guest information along with your payment selection.

I see that Starpoints top your Mile Value Leaderboard.

The images in this post are showing up smaller than I'd like. I can't solve it, but if you just click on them, they'll go full screen.

Incredible Sub-$800 First Class Fare from Myanmar

Both FlyerTalk and MilePoint are absolutely buzzing about a Star Alliance premium cabin mistake fare departing from Yangon, Myanmar and ending in Montreal, Canada.

The trip routes through Tokyo, Zurich, and New York, and all legs are in premium cabins on great carriers such as Swiss and All Nippon Airways.

This is a blog about frequent flier miles. Almost everything I write is designed to help you accumulate miles and points efficiently then redeem them for free travel--up front if possible.

But sometimes using points for a ticket is a huge mistake. Sometimes, just book with cash. JBWC. I'll give two examples, and I'll tell you how to figure out whether you should book with cash or miles on a particular trip.

LAX to Honolulu

The first example comes from yesterday.

There's an ongoing discussion in the miles-sphere about the value of a mile started when Gary and Ben disagreed about the value of a Hilton Point.

Hey there, you're reading an outdated post! The updated series from April 2015 can be found here.

This is the ninth post in a monthlong series. Each post will take about two minutes to read and may include an action item that takes the reader another two minutes to complete.

A version of this post appeared today at hackmytrip.com. Thanks to that Scott for the opportunity to make a guest post. I invite my readers to check his stuff out.

This post is part of a series that will detail verbatim my negotiations with credit card companies to squeeze every last point and cent out of my cards.

Last August, I opened both the Citi AAdvantage Visa and Citi AAdvantage Amex at the same time to earn 150,000 American Airlines miles. The Visa had a spending requirement of $1,500 within four months to unlock its 75,000-mile bonus. After hitting that bonus, I moved on to unlocking the Amex's bonus then on to other cards.